Finding opportunities in the fog

If you’ve only just come to terms with cloud computing, here comes the next thing: fog computing.

“Fog computing is the necessary next stage on from cloud computing,” says Vikram Kumar, the chief executive of New Zealand start-up KotahiNet. “It is where the edge of networks become intelligent and autonomous.”

Kumar may be familiar to readers as the former head of InternetNZ and the first chief executive of the Mega cloud business.

Fog computing has the features of cloud computing, such as data, computing, storage and applications. But instead of concentrating resources in a data centre, it moves them closer to where they are used.

At times, it can mean putting computing resources in locations well beyond the reach of traditional networks. We sometimes call this edge computing. It turns out this widely distributed approach is an ideal way of dealing with the Internet of Things (IoT).

Read the full story by Bill Bennett in the New Zealand Herald.